Excellent article. Here in Edinburgh, the city council is trying to limit the number of Air BnBs. In my mind there are good AirBnBs - where someone rents out a spare room or rents out their whole home when they're on holiday and there are the bad AirBnBs where whole flats / houses are rented out all the time, we have too many of the latter here (and elsewhere).
As for community=bsed conservation. Its time as a buzzword does seem to have passed. And that is probably another symptom of a system in which everything has to change, has to be new. Or maybe, the concept hase been killed off by academic treatments like the one John posts here? I guess one of the reasons, I did not contiune in the academy (at least on a regular basis) is that I thought we were supposed to be informed tellers of stories from which the people could learn, not the guardians of abstract, essentially secret languages.
I also take John's point about the global scale of problems making local action seem anemic or even irrelevant. It isn't - small differences are important to all of us where we live - and community-based conservation is still practiced. Perhaps it has become routine in some applications? But no idea stays front and center in our overwhelming flow of information and new ideas unless it has cheerleaders who try to keep it in view. And it seems to me that humility is one of the virtues of the community-based approach.
So, it comes back to something I think about a lot: How do we scale up the good things that happen at a local and sometimes regional level? We don't seem to know how and are stuck, therefore, with good news at the local level (a new sidewalk linking neighborhoods, a new conservation easement, etc,, positive things that are happening every day) and tragedy or farce at the larger scale.
This covers a lot of ground. Let's begin with STRs.
There have been STRs for a long time, particularly it seems to me, in beach resorts, though of course there are no consistent useful data about STRs in the distant past. What has happened is something we are taught not to understand; that changing scale is not just quantitative. At some point more STRs change the qualities of a place. That such qualitative changes happen cannot be digested by a system in which not just growth, but exponential growth must continue for the system to run. Fortunately, many people are not completely brainwashed by the gospel of growth and eventually resist the losses they are experiencing in their neighborhoods and towns. The cause is lost in places. Lake Placid is the worst I know about. But more and more communities are somewhat effectively regulating STRs. This is an arena in which, barring top-down intervention by state legislatures or the courts. a community can find a reasonable compromise. And thus, in a small way, practice community-based conservation.
Interesting topic, John. Enjoyed the comments as well. A few years ago, my family and I stayed in a beautiful STR in Paris in one of those gorgeous buildings on the Seine. The owners were Irish and rented it when they weren't using it. Staying there gave us a new perspective , allowing us to be part of a neighborhood for a week, that we would never have known if we'd stayed in a hotel.
Good read. Short-term rentals mean different things to different communities. They are nice for travelers (watch out for those fees!), especially those who want a kitchen and are staying for more than a day or two. But STRs certainly worsen the affordable housing crisis afflicting many communities in the West. STRs also impact the quality of life (rhythm of life?) in a neighborhood. I'm not aware of too many neighbors of STRs that are thrilled by all the rotating cadre of unknown faces, vehicles and behaviors that STRs bring to a neighborhood. The problem is especially acute in Western tourist towns like Red Lodge, which are afflicted by both unaffordable housing for the workforce and overtourism. Certainly the solution means compromise. STRs don't need to be banned, but they should be restricted, which will allow more housing to be used for long-term rentals, as well as reduce impacts on the quality of life of STR neighbors. Restricting STRs may not help with overtourism, but that's another story...
Hey, John. Good localized, bottoms-up thinking. Let a few million Airbnbs, etc., bloom. My wife and I just stayed in eight airbnbs across rural and suburban Florida and up the Atlantic Coast, plus suburban Miami (Homestead) and in crazy-developed Kitty Hawk. Met regular people -- one farm family -- of the kind you'd never meet on the motel circuit. They were cheap, memorable stays with nice Americans in nice homes who either left you completely alone or treated you like beloved relatives/friends. Airbnb is a natural, organic, brilliant thing that became corporate in the way it's run and organized and the way it has been made safe and convenient to use; its downsides are few and well-publicized; its benefits are many and have now become a welcome part of the culture. Black Americans in the South kind of invented airbnb out of necessity. Back in the 1920s and through the end of legal Jim Crow, blacks traveling by car could not stay at hotels (and the few motels/cabins that existed) in the 17 Jim Crow states and elsewhere. Many black businessmen or professionals or farmers in towns and cities across the South developed an informal but widespread system whereby they would open their homes for overnight stays to each other, for free. It was a necessity, shamefully. The Green Book was a guide for blacks traveling by car that told them where they could eat and sleep -- was part of that same idea, on a smaller scale. Examples of how the 'system' worked in the South in 1948 can be found in my book '30 Days a Black Man.'
Excellent article. Here in Edinburgh, the city council is trying to limit the number of Air BnBs. In my mind there are good AirBnBs - where someone rents out a spare room or rents out their whole home when they're on holiday and there are the bad AirBnBs where whole flats / houses are rented out all the time, we have too many of the latter here (and elsewhere).
As for community=bsed conservation. Its time as a buzzword does seem to have passed. And that is probably another symptom of a system in which everything has to change, has to be new. Or maybe, the concept hase been killed off by academic treatments like the one John posts here? I guess one of the reasons, I did not contiune in the academy (at least on a regular basis) is that I thought we were supposed to be informed tellers of stories from which the people could learn, not the guardians of abstract, essentially secret languages.
I also take John's point about the global scale of problems making local action seem anemic or even irrelevant. It isn't - small differences are important to all of us where we live - and community-based conservation is still practiced. Perhaps it has become routine in some applications? But no idea stays front and center in our overwhelming flow of information and new ideas unless it has cheerleaders who try to keep it in view. And it seems to me that humility is one of the virtues of the community-based approach.
So, it comes back to something I think about a lot: How do we scale up the good things that happen at a local and sometimes regional level? We don't seem to know how and are stuck, therefore, with good news at the local level (a new sidewalk linking neighborhoods, a new conservation easement, etc,, positive things that are happening every day) and tragedy or farce at the larger scale.
Any thoughts?
This covers a lot of ground. Let's begin with STRs.
There have been STRs for a long time, particularly it seems to me, in beach resorts, though of course there are no consistent useful data about STRs in the distant past. What has happened is something we are taught not to understand; that changing scale is not just quantitative. At some point more STRs change the qualities of a place. That such qualitative changes happen cannot be digested by a system in which not just growth, but exponential growth must continue for the system to run. Fortunately, many people are not completely brainwashed by the gospel of growth and eventually resist the losses they are experiencing in their neighborhoods and towns. The cause is lost in places. Lake Placid is the worst I know about. But more and more communities are somewhat effectively regulating STRs. This is an arena in which, barring top-down intervention by state legislatures or the courts. a community can find a reasonable compromise. And thus, in a small way, practice community-based conservation.
Interesting topic, John. Enjoyed the comments as well. A few years ago, my family and I stayed in a beautiful STR in Paris in one of those gorgeous buildings on the Seine. The owners were Irish and rented it when they weren't using it. Staying there gave us a new perspective , allowing us to be part of a neighborhood for a week, that we would never have known if we'd stayed in a hotel.
Good read. Short-term rentals mean different things to different communities. They are nice for travelers (watch out for those fees!), especially those who want a kitchen and are staying for more than a day or two. But STRs certainly worsen the affordable housing crisis afflicting many communities in the West. STRs also impact the quality of life (rhythm of life?) in a neighborhood. I'm not aware of too many neighbors of STRs that are thrilled by all the rotating cadre of unknown faces, vehicles and behaviors that STRs bring to a neighborhood. The problem is especially acute in Western tourist towns like Red Lodge, which are afflicted by both unaffordable housing for the workforce and overtourism. Certainly the solution means compromise. STRs don't need to be banned, but they should be restricted, which will allow more housing to be used for long-term rentals, as well as reduce impacts on the quality of life of STR neighbors. Restricting STRs may not help with overtourism, but that's another story...
Hey, John. Good localized, bottoms-up thinking. Let a few million Airbnbs, etc., bloom. My wife and I just stayed in eight airbnbs across rural and suburban Florida and up the Atlantic Coast, plus suburban Miami (Homestead) and in crazy-developed Kitty Hawk. Met regular people -- one farm family -- of the kind you'd never meet on the motel circuit. They were cheap, memorable stays with nice Americans in nice homes who either left you completely alone or treated you like beloved relatives/friends. Airbnb is a natural, organic, brilliant thing that became corporate in the way it's run and organized and the way it has been made safe and convenient to use; its downsides are few and well-publicized; its benefits are many and have now become a welcome part of the culture. Black Americans in the South kind of invented airbnb out of necessity. Back in the 1920s and through the end of legal Jim Crow, blacks traveling by car could not stay at hotels (and the few motels/cabins that existed) in the 17 Jim Crow states and elsewhere. Many black businessmen or professionals or farmers in towns and cities across the South developed an informal but widespread system whereby they would open their homes for overnight stays to each other, for free. It was a necessity, shamefully. The Green Book was a guide for blacks traveling by car that told them where they could eat and sleep -- was part of that same idea, on a smaller scale. Examples of how the 'system' worked in the South in 1948 can be found in my book '30 Days a Black Man.'